Existence Quotes - Page 32

• It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.

  Tanith Lee

  Intelligent, Apathy, Disinterest

  Tanith Lee (2014). “Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition”, p.67, Wildside Press LLC

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living — a set of values.

  Sylvia Plath

  Thinking, Sea, Two

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.18, Anchor

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We see ourselves in other people’s eyes. It’s the nature of the human race; we are a species of reflection, hungry for it in every facet of our existence. Maybe that’s why vampires seem so monstrous to us—they cast no reflection. Parents, if they’re good ones, reflect the wonder of our existence and the success we can become. Friends, well chosen, show us pretty pictures of ourselves, and encourage us to grow into them. The Beast shows us the very worst in ourselves and makes us know it’s true .

  Karen Marie Moning

  Eye, Reflection, Race

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.601, Dell

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out so well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hurt, Mad, Water

  Jack Kerouac (2011). “The Dharma Bums”, p.254, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To encounter the sacred is to be alive at the deepest center of human existence. Sacred places are the truest definitions of the earth; they stand for the earth immediately and forever; they are its flags and shields. If you would know the earth for what it really is, learn it through its sacred places. At Devil’s Tower or Canyon de Chelly or the Cahokia Mounds, you touch the pulse of the living planet; you feel its breath upon you. You become one with a spirit that pervades geologic time and space.

  N. Scott Momaday

  Space, Forever, Devil

  46 Copy quote

• People don’t realize, he said, how important it is to wake up every morning with a song in your heart.” J. Krishnamurti. “The song stands for a sense of joy in existence, a joy that is free of any good or bad choices.

  Deepak Chopra

  Spiritual, Song, Morning

  7 Copy quote

• Well, I spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it's a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still — that's how you build a future.

  Arthur Miller

  Summer, Morning, School

  Arthur Miller (2009). “Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge”, p.138, A&C Black

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• While I loved, and while I was loved, what an existence I enjoyed!

  Charlotte Bronte

  Enjoyed

  Charlotte Bronte (2016). “Villette”, p.39, Xist Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.

  Patrick Süskind

  Pleasure, Splendid, Found

  9 Copy quote

• Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.

  Federico Fellini

  Life Is, Miserable, Organized

  21 Copy quote

• He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.

  Saint Augustine

  Wish, Reason, Deny

  81 Copy quote

• All I’ve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Grief, Self

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.194, Profile Books

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• [in the true mad north] of introspection, where 'falcons of the inner eye' dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Memories, Fall, Eye

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1958). “A Coney Island of the Mind”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

  Ken Kesey

  Strong, Cuckoos, World

  Ken Kesey (2016). “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, p.33, Hamilton Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.

  Andrei Tarkovsky

  Mistake, Lying, Artist

  54 Copy quote

• The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

  William James

  Lonely, Civilization, Agony

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence.

  David Foster Wallace

  Support, Important, Vivid

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately, for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going.

  Lauren Oliver

  Roots, Stronger, Way

  Lauren Oliver (2015). “Delirium Trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, Requiem”, p.294, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Love, Men, Order

  10 Copy quote

• We had stretched out our arms to each other and supported something in our joined hands, but this thing we were holding was like a sort of gas that exists when you believe in its existence and disappears when you doubt. The task of supporting it seems simple at first glance, but actually requires an ultimate refinement of calculation and a consummate skill.

  Yukio Mishima

  Believe, Simple, Hands

  Yukio Mishima (1958). “Confessions of a Mask”, p.243, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not all is certainty in our world, Karigan. If it were there'd be no opportunity for faith; and then it would be a very dull existence.

  Kristen Britain

  Opportunity, Our World, Would Be

  Kristen Britain (2007). “The High King's Tomb: Book Three of Green Rider”, p.467, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.

  Donna Tartt

  Essentials, Way, Subtle

  Donna Tartt (2011). “The Secret History”, p.8, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each one of us was harmed by being brought into existence. That harm is not negligible, because the quality of even the best lives is very bad—and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.

  David Benatar

  People, Quality, Too Late

  David Benatar (2008). “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence”, p.7, Oxford University Press

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is unlikely that many people will take to heart the conclusion that coming into existence is always a harm. It is even less likely that many people will stop having children. By contrast, it is quite likely that my views either will be ignored or will be dismissed. As this response will account for a great deal of suffering between now and the demise of humanity, it cannot plausibly be thought of as philanthropic. That is not to say that it is motivated by any malice towards humans, but it does result from a self-deceptive indifference to the harm of coming into existence.

  David Benatar

  Children, Heart, Self

  David Benatar (2008). “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence”, p.225, Oxford University Press

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Men, Years, Giving

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979). “Emile: Or, On Education”, p.42, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source